I signed up for the beta test and with any luck I’ll be accepted and can give you some feedback on how my tests work out.

It will be interesting to see where this goes as since launching Google Adwords, ads along side the search results have always been text based.

(Actually there is one exception: product listing ads, they come with images too but do not seem to be in wide use.)

]]>What’s New? Fire! Evacuate!http://www.adamkillam.com/whats-new-fire-evacuate/
Thu, 06 Jun 2013 22:50:49 +0000http://www.adamkillam.com/?p=830Well it’s June 5th 2013, the sun is out, and it’s been a while since my last post.

Seeing as how I just had to evacuate my building, I thought it would be a great time to post an update!

With any luck the building won’t burn down but two fire trucks out front and our concierge pushing us (over the speaker system) to flee the building motivated me to jump ship.

So here I sit, cappuccino in hand. Looking back at the first part of the year, it was a busy one so far.

Finalized a project for a client to setup marketing automation and lead nurture system extraordinaire, InfusionSoft

Shot my first snowboarding mini movie using the GoPro Hero 3, felt like a Hero for a day

Re-tore my MCL, started physio

Bought a new domain name, started working on a rel-launch of my business

And I could go on but that would be boring right?

Marketing sin #1: being boring, so I’ll stop with the bullet points.

2013 is looking up. Businesses continue to accelerate their online advertising spend and things continue to get more interesting with mobile, social, and now we’re hearing more and more about “wearable” media.

I’ve come across too many interesting links lately to post them all so here are a couple of my recent favorites:

That’s it for now. The firetrucks have left. My cappuccino is done. I’m outta here!

– Adam

]]>Google Launches Financial Affiliate Site: Google Advisorhttp://www.adamkillam.com/google-launches-financial-affiliate-site-google-advisor/
Fri, 20 May 2011 15:33:44 +0000http://www.adamkillam.com/?p=792Or “Why You Shouldn’t Be Naive About Google: It’s a Business People, a Very, Very Large Business.”

You may have heard the saying “He who controls the gold, makes the rules.” Or some such variation. Well for some time the new rule has been “He who controls the traffic, makes the rules.” And in the online world, that means that Google can do pretty much anything it wants.

After taking a look at the site and the sign up process visitors are encouraged to go through to apply for credit cards and bank accounts and mortgages, I realized this site is simply a competitor to sites like creditcards.com which is a very well known affiliate site.So essentially Google has setup its own affiliate site and has become an affiliate of several credit card companies, banks and mortgage providers.

For those of you who do not know what affiliate marketing is, it refers to anÂ independentÂ marketer who sells a company’s products and services for a commission. Affiliate marketing is a huge business and there are very few well known brand names that don’t have some kind of affiliate program. (Amazon is well known for paying Â a commission every time you sell one of their books for example.)

The affiliate marketing game has stirred much controversy over the years as many affiliate sites and affiliate programs have been deemed shady, spammy, and of low quality. Google has, in the past, banned tens of thousands of affiliates from using Google Adwords, removed their sites from its organic listings and basically made it difficult for many of them to do business.

So it’s interesting to see them jumping into the space and going head to head with the very people they seem to vilify.

But that’s what you can do when you control massive amounts of traffic. You can make your own rules.

Main take away: Don’t be naive about Google.

It’s not a good thing or a bad thing that Google has launched an affiliate site in my mind. It just is. But don’t think for a second that your favorite search engine might not come after your industry or even your own website if it sees you are making good money. Using Google Analytics, Google Webmaster tools, Google Adwords, the Google Toolbar, and Google.com among other services , Google amasses huge amounts of data it can then analyse and use any way it pleases. So be aware.

Here’s my reply to Mashables post:

Ben, this is a Google version of credtcard dot com which is an affiliate site. So while this looks like a simple “comparison” site, really Google is in fact earning commission for any account that you sign up for through this site whether it be a mortgage, credit card or other service. Just about anyone can sign up to be an affiliate of a credit card company and Google (who happens to own their own affiliate network for those of you who don’t know) is simply copying a business model that has been highly profitable for some of their own partners. So don’t be fooled people: this is a “make money when our visitors apply” business, an affiliate business. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, it’s a valuable service. I do find it ironic that Google battles with affiliates that use its search engines, banning groups of them and what not, and then they turn around and use the model themselves. But that’s what you can do when you control the traffic! It’s not about gold anymore, it’s “he who controls the traffic makes the rules.”

http://mashable.com/2011/05/19/google-advisor/#comment-17370473

https://www.google.com/advisor

Ben, this is a Google version of credtcard dot com which is an affiliate site. So while this looks like a simple “comparison” site, really Google is in fact earning commission for any account that you sign up for through this site whether it be a mortgage, credit card or other service. Just about anyone can sign up to be an affiliate of a credit card company and Google (who happens to own their own affiliate network for those of you who don’t know) is simply copying a business model that has been highly profitable for some of their own partners. So don’t be fooled people: this is a “make money when our visitors apply” business, an affiliate business. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, it’s a valuable service. I do find it ironic that Google battles with affiliates that use its search engines, banning groups of them and what not, and then they turn around and use the model themselves. But that’s what you can do when you control the traffic! It’s not about gold anymore, it’s “he who controls the traffic makes the rules.”

The new service allows advertisers to publish text messages on blimps that will circle major events such as the super bowl.

If you have an Adwords account, you should see a notice like this one:

If you follow the link, you’ll be taken to the following page where you can sign up for Blimps:

And if you sign up, you get presented with a screen that says:

It’s been a few minutes since I signed up and still no blimp in site flying over Vancouver likeÂ I requested. Perhaps there’s a time delay?

– Adam

]]>Google Instant: Not instantly available..yethttp://www.adamkillam.com/google-instant-not-instantly-available-yet/
http://www.adamkillam.com/google-instant-not-instantly-available-yet/#commentsFri, 10 Sep 2010 00:14:00 +0000http://www.adamkillam.com/?p=730There was a buzz of information flying around this morning with the announcement of Google Instant. Instant refers to the new way Google will display search results and is an attempt to cut down the time it takes to find what you’re searching for.

However, the service is not yet available in Canada as far as I can tell, at least not as of today. In the mean time, you can..Â Update: As Oana pointed out in the comment below, you need to be using Google.com NOT Google.ca in order to use Google Instant.

Check out Google’s promo video on Youtube which gives you an overview of the new interface:

Personally what I will be interested to see is how Instant affects Google Adwords impressions and results.

Will there be a huge increase in impressions as pages and pages of ads get shown rapidly to users as they flip through search results? When I have some answers to these and other questions, I’ll be sure to post them here.

According to Google, if your content network campaign is opted in to show ads on mobile devices, this is the domain name that shows up for those visitors who see and click on your ad via a mobile app.

For one of our client’s campaigns a lot of clicks were being generated without any conversions, so I added this to the excluded placements list to stop any more wasted clicks.

If you pull reports regularly, you can catch this kind of thing.

Take a look at your own content network reports (e.g check your automatic placements) regularly to see if domains like adsenseformobileapps.com are generating clicks and therefore costs, without conversions. If so, get rid of them!

If you’re new to the Google Display Network, in a nutshell it is the network of websites owned by Google and sites owned by third party publishers that show Google text and banner ads to their visitors.

Before the re-brand, Google had been placing more emphasis on the Content Network with the launch of multiple new features like ad re-targeting or re-marketing as Google calls it, and a push to get advertisers to try banner ads using its display ad builder.

When you do a search in Google, you’re seeing ads on the search network. When you see an ad on your favorite website and you see the “Ads by Google” image at the bottom of the ad, the website you are viewing is part of the Display Network (Formerly the Google Content Network. The launch of the Display Network website and renaming the content network is really just a PR play to make something that already existed look new again: a classic marketing tactic.)

Here’s a quote from Google that summarizes where you can show your ads using the Display Network:

The Google Display Network will comprise all of the sites (apart from search sites), where you can buy ads through Google, including YouTube, Google properties such as Google Finance, Gmail, Google Maps, Blogger as well as over one million Web, video, gaming, and mobile display partners (our display partners include all of our AdSense and DoubleClick Ad Exchange partner sites that allow text and/or display ads). The Google Display Network offers all ad formats – Â text, image, rich media, and video ads – enabling you to unleash your creativity and engage potential customers across the Web.

A few of the benefits of the Display Network include:

Clicks and Conversions can be much cheaper than the Google search network

You can target the websites you want your ads to show on

You can use re-targeting to show your ads to people who have visited your site in the past

You can often generate far more traffic than is possible on the search network, even for niche terms

Our clients have known about the content network for quite some time and some have been taking advantage of the power of image ads for a while now to drive traffic and conversions at a lower cost than traditional search traffic.

If you’d like to learn more or want to test driving and conversions using the Display Network, get in touch or give me a call 778.899.4523.

PS: I almost forgot. Google released a study on

]]>Cool New Features From Google Adwordshttp://www.adamkillam.com/cool-new-features-from-google-adwords/
http://www.adamkillam.com/cool-new-features-from-google-adwords/#commentsThu, 20 May 2010 01:30:09 +0000http://www.adamkillam.com/?p=612Google Adwords continues to be one of the most targeted and highly effective advertising platforms in the world. It’s been estimated that 95% of Google’s revenue comes from Adwords and that being the case, it’s not surprising they continue to innovate and release new features on a continual basis.

In 2010 so far we’ve seen some great new feature editions. Here’s a snapshot of a few that you should take note of.

Video Targeting on YouTube

Google recently introduced a new tool called theÂ Youtube Video Targeting Tool to help advertisers target and display ads within popular videos. The idea behind this tool is that it helps you find popular videos in categories related to your products or services and then export a list of these videos. You can then upload the list into Google Adwords in order to show your ads within the video as it’s playing.

The idea of cute puppies wearing American Apparel jumpers and hoodies displaying below cute pet videos caught on at American Apparel. The result was a cute and memorable advertising campaign that targeted viewers with ads that wereÂ visuallyÂ relevant to the videos they were watching.

UpcomingÂ Webinars

Google has recently made some new developments in display advertising, and is hosting a webinar May 20th at 11am to show off the benefits to advertisers – and how real companies are using the new developments to their advantage. Want to learn more? Sign up for the webinar here.

Local Business Ads and Location Extensions

Google is transitioning its local business ads feature and to be known as “location extension ads”. Local business ads have been used by all sorts of businesses to get under the nose of people searching in a given area. If you typed in ‘coffee shop’, for example, Google would determine your location and return a selection of coffee shops nearby. If you are a company with multiple locations, setting up and running individual ads targeted at each location quickly becomes a pain, and a waste of time. Enter Google’s location extensions.

Location extensions makes the location in your ad dynamic. This means that your business’ address and phone number will change, based on which of your locations is closest to where the customer is while searching. Local extensions has been around for awhile (Google introduced it in July 2009), but now all local business ads will be switched over to be compatible with the service. For those who don’t update their own ads, Google will automatically switch them over in coming weeks.

A New Way To Target Keywords

Several days ago, Google released a new keyword match modifier in the UK and Canada. The “+”, also known as “modified broad match”, is a way to match a given keyword to its most closely-related variants. Such variants could be alternate spellings, typos, or pluralizations/singularizations of the keyword. This is a good modifier to use if you’re targeting a campaign very specifically. This way, your ads display only for this keyword – plus similar variants that you now won’t have to brainstorm and add to your target list (especially typos – not fun or easy to brainstorm).

Google Adwords is an ideal channel for businesses looking quickly generate leads and sales online or who need to directly target a specific audience. It looks like it’s going to be maintaining its momentum as Google continually finds new ways to bring advertisers closer to their potential customers.

]]>http://www.adamkillam.com/cool-new-features-from-google-adwords/feed/1New: Mobile & Local Keyword Research Tool from Googlehttp://www.adamkillam.com/new-mobile-local-keyword-research-tool-from-google/
Thu, 15 Apr 2010 23:31:52 +0000http://www.adamkillam.com/?p=568Google has come out with a new, beta version of their keyword research tool that allows users to do keyword research on mobile and local based searches.

The new tool has a cleaner interface than the old keyword tool and comes with some added benefits:

1. You can now easily do research on mobile searches only. Before this option as a nicely kept “secret” only available with the internal Adwords keyword tool. This means you can tell what people are searching for using mobile phones in your area. As you may or may not be aware, the number of people on the planet who use mobile phones is in the range of 50% of the world’s population- far, far larger than the number of people who access the web right now from desktop computers. In time, mobile use of the web will likely dwarf all other forms of web access so getting a handle on what terms and phrases your customers are searching for on their mobiles is going to be a necessity as a web marketer/business owner.

To conduct a mobile keyword search only, click Advanced options and then check off the mobile box as seen below.

*click to enlarge

2. You can more accurately target your own country or a specific country from a list of countries Google provides data for. This is helpful for a number of reasons and the most obvious one to me is that using the old tool, Google told us the difference between local searches and global monthly searches but it never specified what local meant! It was impossible to tell if local meant Vancouver, or North America etc. Now, we can hone in on one of several different countries and get more targeted results. This is important for local and national advertisers alike.

Here’s a snapshot of the new tool’s interface with some keyword data populated:

*click to enlarge.

3. The final benefit I can see to this tool at first glance is your ability to add in useful metrics like approximate cost per click, competition levels, and your ad share or the percentage of time your ads are shown compared to total number of ads being shown (available if you’re logged into Adwords).

So all in all I like the new look.

There is one serious drawback that I didn’t see a resolution for at first glance, the old keyword tool separates keywords into groups for you which is very handy when setting up Adwords accounts or analyzing a site to see what Google understands it is all about. If that feature’s available in this version I missed it at first glance. If not, I’ll continue using the old tool for now.

]]>Bing Takes Gold, Google Silver, at Olympicshttp://www.adamkillam.com/bing-takes-gold-google-silver-at-olympics/
Fri, 12 Feb 2010 22:56:31 +0000http://www.adamkillam.com/?p=529It’s been confirmed. Bing outdid Google today by updating it’s background to a shot of Science World in Vancouver and outplayed Google in the race to have the coolest Olympics Logo…..or so the chatter on Twitter suggested this morning.